How should we sequence the trainer and the flight sim in a syllabus?

Alternate, per system. The tight loop is the point of the product: explore a system in 3D, run its removal/installation procedures, pass the knowledge check — then immediately do the pre-flight maintenance stage for that system and fly. A student who under-torques a component in the morning should feel the developing symptom that afternoon, while the procedure is still fresh, and read the debrief that names exactly what they chose and what it caused.

Two mechanics of the fault system matter for scheduling. Faults have onset delays of 20–200 seconds and ramp over about three minutes, so allocate sorties long enough for symptoms to develop — a five-minute hop can land before the consequence surfaces, which teaches the opposite lesson. And the post-flight debrief attributes crashes conservatively: it only charges a maintenance error when that fault kind could plausibly cause that crash. Instructors should reinforce rather than override that — a debrief that overclaims gets tuned out.

The generated exam then works well as the end-of-block gate, drawing on a single airframe for type courses or the mixed fleet for a general course. Because papers are seeded, you can also issue every student the same paper when comparability matters more than variety — see the exam thread on this board.